Preliminary evidence for altered brain-heart communication during anxiogenic movies
Poster No:
461
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Peter Kirk1, Oliver Robinson1
Institutions:
1UCL, London, United Kingdom
First Author:
Co-Author:
Introduction:
During states of anxiety, fundamental threat circuitry in the brain can increase heart rate via alterations in autonomic balance (increased sympathetic activity and parasympathetic withdrawal) and may serve to promote interoceptive integration and awareness of cardiac signals. Moreover, evidence indicates pathological anxiety could be associated with increased communication between the brain and the heart. Yet, this phenomenon remains not well understood. For instance, studies in this area have been conducted within the confines of tightly-controlled experimental paradigms. Whether anxiety impacts brain-heart communication outside of such experimental settings, and in relatively more naturalistic contexts, is less clear.
Methods:
Using a suspenseful movie fMRI paradigm (n=29 healthy volunteers; Caltech Conte dataset; Kliemann et al., 2022), we predicted that brain responses across an anxiety-relevant 'defensive response network' would show increased coherence with cardiac responses heart rate as a function of induced anxiety. That is, the coherence between brain activity and heart rate would be greater as participants watched a suspenseful movie clip compared to a non-suspenseful movie clip and during rest.
Results:
Counter to our predictions, we found decreased coherence between heart rate and brain responses during increased anxiety, namely in amygdala-prefrontal circuitry (figure 1). Specifically, we demonstrated that suspenseful movie-watching was associated with reduced coherence between heart rate and: amygdala-dorsomedial prefrontal dynamic connectivity; amygdala-subgenual anterior cingulate dynamic connectivity; precuneus activity; vmPFC activity; and bilateral putamen activity.
Conclusions:
Here, we found preliminary evidence for anxiety-relevant alterations in the coherence between heart rate and amygdala-prefrontal responding during movie-watching. However, effects were in the inverse direction to which we hypothesized. We posit that anxiety-relevant decreases in brain-heart coherence may be underpinned by parasympathetic withdrawal or decreased interoceptive awareness during suspenseful movie-watching.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotion and Motivation Other 2
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
fMRI Connectivity and Network Modeling
Keywords:
Anxiety
Emotions
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Pre-registration
Psychiatric
Psychiatric Disorders
Other - Movie fMRI
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
